Drip Irrigation systems have quickly become an industry standard for the irrigation of tree, row, and forage crops in arid environments. The controlled and precise application of water and injected nutrients via drip systems=has led to higher yields for growers. Water and energy savings are also realized with drip irrigation systems.
Livestock and dairy operations have lagged behind other agricultural operations in developing and adopting new water recycling techniques. Livestock feed lots and dairy farms use water for multiple applications and reuse the water in several different ways, including drinking water for the animals, misters and other climate control systems, refrigeration systems, and lane flushing systems. After these operations use water, it is drained to on-site settling ponds to allow particulate matter to settle out of the waste water to reduce the amount of solids and reduce the organic matter in the waste water. As water shortages and the drought continue to worsen, it has become important for farmers to recycle and reuse effluent water. Water collected in settling ponds offers a resource for ag operations such as dairies and feedlots if filtering innovations are employed to reclaim the effluent.
Conventional effluent water filtration systems mix effluent water with fresh well water, and pressurize the mixture into a battery of sand media filter tanks, thereby filtering the blend in a single stage. This process has low flow rates and low volumes of effluent recapture. Further, such sand media filter tanks must be back-flushed frequently, causing lost filtering time, and correspondingly, less filtered water production. Overall, existing effluent water filtering technology is slow, inefficient, expensive, and requires frequent cleaning cycles during which effluent water cannot be filtered. Because of these inefficiencies, many agricultural operations have not adopted effluent filtration and continue to use wasteful water use practices.
Therefore, improved and efficient effluent recycling technologies are needed.